Interesting connection, Jere. We have a flower that grows wild in this part of the world that was named for Queen Charlotte.
It is cultivated around the world these days, and it has even been adopted as a symbol of Los Angeles, but its natural range is entirely South African.
The botanical name is
Strelitzia reginĉ. The reginĉ bit refers to Charlotte as Queen, while the generic name comes from her fathers capital, the city of Strelitz in Mecklenburg.
(Nowadays Strelitz is part of Brandenburg, thanks to a reorganisation carried out by the Soviet occupation government in the early 1950s.)
The type species,
S reginĉ, is also known as the crane flower or the bird of paradise flower, and its natural range is along the Eastern Cape coast from Humansdorp (half an hours drive west of Port Elizabeth, where I live) to Pondoland, on the Natal border.
It skips Natal proper (the old colony) and is then also found on the coast of Zululand.
There is a colour variant with yellow in the flower, rather than orange. There is also a variant in which the leaves never open fully, but resemble spears. That one is unique to the Port Elizabeth district.
There is a much taller species,
S nicolai, also called the Natal wild banana (it has a superficial resemblance to a banana tree) which is quite different in the colouring of its flowers.
I have designed tartans based on their colours which can be seen at
http://www.facebook.com/mike.oettle#...&ref=fbx_album http://www.facebook.com/mike.oettle#...&ref=fbx_album
and
http://www.facebook.com/mike.oettle#...&ref=fbx_album
Regards,
Mike
Linear Mode
